NBC Obscures Sanders Margin

In the morning I watch WBAL, the local NBC affiliate, for weather, traffic and news, in that order. This morning I wanted some idea of the margin of Sanders over Clinton in the New Hampshire primary. The lower screen ticker said:

Trump wins with 35% … Sanders edges Clinton …

The news segment was no more specific, with brief clips of Trump’s victory speech, Sanders’ victory speech and Clinton’s “we’ll keep fighting” speech. Small wonder most young people get their news from the internet and social media these days. According to TalkingPointsMemo, with 89% of precincts reporting:

Sanders won over 138,716 votes, or about 60% of the Democratic turnout.

Trump won over 92,417 votes, or about 35% of the Republican turnout.

Clinton won over 88,827 votes, or about 38% of the Democratic turnout.

Kasich won over 41,813 votes, or about 16% of the Republican turnout.

That’s a solid outsider win for Bernie Sanders, but outsiders Trump and Cruz lost 53% of the Republican turnout to establishment candidates. Based on the TPM percentages, Republicans got over 264,000 votes, while Democrats got over 231,000 votes. So the outsider factor turned out to be much stronger on the left than on the right.